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<title>February Prompt Fic: Missive by methylviolet10b</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29775228">February Prompt Fic: Missive</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b'>methylviolet10b</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>2021 Monthly Prompt Responses [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Introspection, M/M, Prompt Fic, light fluff</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:35:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,125</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29775228</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>With Holmes away on a case, Watson makes a discovery. Written for the February prompt over on Watson's Woes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>2021 Monthly Prompt Responses [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2133285</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>February Prompt Fic: Missive</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Warnings: Some introspection here, but not really much of a plot. And written in a huge rush. You have been warned.</p><p>Prompt word: Missive</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Damn and blast!”</p><p>I would not have uttered the curse, mild as it was, had I not been alone in the room. I had picked up many skills while serving in Her Majesty’s Army. Many of them were beneficial in my post-military life, but patients and strangers alike looked askance at a doctor who could blister paint with colorful language. Holmes never minded – in fact he had asked me to demonstrate some of the more peculiar epithets I’d learned – but after I’d startled Mrs Hudson into dropping a tray, I began the long, arduous process of curbing the habit. Life with Mary had largely completed the cure, and I’d been too numb with grief after Holmes’ death to weep, much less curse.</p><p>Mary died, and Holmes came back from the dead, and I found myself living in Baker Street once more, medical practice sold and only a smattering of patients left. Holmes wanted my company on cases, insisted we share fees as we shared rooms. It was easy to fall back into the habit of being the companion and chronicler, to exchange the regular routine of rounds and office hours for the unpredictable demands of cases. Other habits were less easy to re-establish – and less worthy of doing so. I had grown unused to the habit of following blindly, trusting implicitly. I wanted to understand what my role was, what the purpose of an errand or the outcome of a ruse would be, at least to some extent. Not to know the whole picture as Holmes saw it, no – even if I were capable of it – but I was no longer content to be a simple spear-carrier or unnamed lackey in the strange play of our lives.</p><p>Not that I really ever had been relegated to so small a part in Holmes’ mind, much less mine. Or so I thought. The perpetually-mystified errand-runner of my stories was more a literary device to enhance the storytelling than anything close to the real John Watson, a foil to explain things to the reader and build narrative tension. But Reichenbach, and its aftermath, had left me feeling a true foil – and a fool – in my eyes, in the eyes of the public, and in what I could only believe Holmes had thought me.  It took both Holmes’ persistent efforts, and time, to restore the habit of trust and belief we had both once taken for granted.</p><p>And as the years went by, our friendship not only recovered, but grew and flourished into a true partnership I never could have imagined. Now, when a case took Holmes somewhere alone, it was only because necessity demanded it. I knew he regretted it as much as I did. Missed me as I missed him, and he made sure I knew it, too. His last telegram had been carefully worded, as always, but clear on the subject to someone who knew the code.  My response would be equally discreet, if rather more wordy, but only if I could retrieve the pen that I’d dropped. It had rolled across the unusually clutter-free floor and wound up some distance away. I rose from my seat and limped over to where it lay on the carpet, near one of the bookcases. I’d been sitting too long and stiffened up. My bad leg was painful today, still recovering from the blow from a steel bar I’d taken almost a fortnight earlier. I stooped and tried to pick up the pen, but pain made me clumsy. My fingers sent the pen rolling again, this time underneath the bookcase.</p><p>I stifled another curse. Getting down to the floor and back up again would be painful but would also help limber up my leg if I did it correctly. Gingerly, I lowered myself and looked under the bookcase. There was my pen – right next to what looked like one of Holmes’ commonplace books. It wouldn’t be the first time one of his volumes had fallen and wound up underneath a table, a bookcase, or just a pile of papers. I fished both of them out and sat upright, placing my bad leg in front of me to help stretch out the tightened muscles. I turned the commonplace-book over, looking for the label that would tell me where it belonged. Holmes was meticulous about this; each commonplace-book had a label pasted onto its spine with the letter or letters of the alphabet it covered. That was repeated on the larger label on the front, along with any additional information Holmes felt useful for categorizing the contents.  Yet this one had no label in either place, not even a shiny patch where a label might once have been glued and come free. Perhaps it was an empty volume, lost before it could be filled?</p><p>A quick look at the sides quickly disabused me of that thought. The pages showed telltale signs of having other papers glued to them, in the way my friend had of creating his commonplace books. That only made the mystery of the missing labels even more confusing. Holmes always added a label to one of his books as part of the first session of adding papers and notes to them.</p><p>But that was the habit of years. Perhaps this was an early version, maybe even the first commonplace-book he’d ever created, and had not yet seen the need for labels? Curious, I opened it.</p><p>The answer was evident on the first page, but I thumbed through several in dazed…well, not disbelief, but something rather like it. For inside these pages were telegrams, notes, letters, and missives spanning all the years of our acquaintance. Every bit of correspondence I had ever sent to Holmes was collected here in this volume, with annotations in Holmes’ precise hand detailing the date and circumstances under which the item had been sent.</p><p>I knew he’d collected all my published stories into his volumes, for he displayed them in our mutual bookcase and occasionally referred to them at need. He teased me about them, but he also kept his collection meticulously up to date and made sure my name was prominently displayed on the labels. This… this was a much more private tribute. Not one Holmes put on display, but a quick check of the most recent entry showed it was equally up-to-date as the collections of my stories, and far more well-thumbed.</p><p>I was no detective, but I understood this evidence well enough.  The only mystery that remained was what to do with my discovery. Replace it where I’d found it? Speak to Holmes about it? Place it on a shelf with some of the other commonplace-books and pretend ignorance? Or something else?</p><p>I had until Holmes’ scheduled return to decide.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Originally posted February 28, 2021.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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